Man Given Indefinite Term for Murder of Vietnamese Girl in Japan

July 8, 2018

Chiba- Chiba District Court sentenced a Japanese man to an indefinite prison term on Friday for murdering a Vietnamese elementary school girl in Matsudo in Chiba Prefecture, east of Tokyo, and abandoning her body in March last year.

The man, Yasumasa Shibuya, 47, was serving as head of the parents' association at the school attended by the victim, Le Thi Nhat Linh, a third-grader, at the time of the crime.

"The crime was despicable and vicious, and its impact on society and school education was immeasurable," Presiding Judge Toshiro Nohara said.

Shibuya's defense filed an appeal against the ruling issued at the lay judge trial.

The judge recognized that DNA samples collected from the body of the nine-year-old girl included the DNA of Shibuya. "It is highly likely that Shibuya is the person who left DNA on the abdomen of the girl when the crime was committed," the judge said.

The judge also said that traces of the girl's blood were found in numerous locations within Shibuya's car.

He dismissed a claim by the defense that the blood traces were left when the girl rode in the car in the past.

"Shibuya has shown no remorse at all," the judge said, rejecting his claim that investigative authorities fabricated evidence as "unreasonable."

Meanwhile, the judge said that the method of the murder was not excessively cruel and that the killing was not premeditated, explaining the reason for not sentencing Shibuya to death.

On March 24, 2017, Shibuya kidnapped the girl in his car with the intent of molesting her, choked her to death and abandoned her body near a ditch in Abiko, also Chiba, according to the ruling. Jiji Press